Currently, the prevalent way of locating information on the Internet and the Intranets is the keyword based search, also known as unstructured search. In this paradigm the goal of the search is locating all web pages relevant to the keywords provided by a user. Along with the advantages this method has its drawbacks stemming from intrinsic imprecision of the keyword search often resulting in overwhelmingly voluminous responses. With time it becomes more and more of a problem since the number of websites grows much faster than the number of keywords. The problem is even more severe if mobile devices are used to conduct the search, not only because of smaller displays but also due to the “on-the-go” nature of mobile users who generally may need faster access to information.
In the e-commerce applications the unstructured search leads to inability to search for goods and services based on their features and technical characteristics that cannot be reduced just to the keywords. For example, there is no general way to search for all digital cameras with optical zoom not less than 10, and with not less than 10 megapixels, and weighting not more than 10 oz, and so on. Instead the customer needs to know the model name, or the brand name, etc., that would allow for the keyword search. Some e-commerce web sites try to alleviate this problem by providing classifications for the products but no classifications are able to substitute for the structured search that would bring those and only those products that satisfy the multiple requirements. As a result, millions and millions of hours are spent annually by the customers trying to locate the right merchandise or services, and to research and compare them in order to get the best deal.
Another problem with the unstructured search is the time it takes to sort through the voluminous responses generated by a keyword search. An ordinary keyword search typically generates such a large amount of information that the user never ends up seeing all of the search results. Server cycles are regularly wasted in generating vast amounts of search responses and information that is never ultimately reviewed or consumed by the user. Wasted server cycles increase response times for all internet users and slow down internet traffic speeds. As a result, internet infrastructure is not utilized to its full potential.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method for structured search that would save time, increase precision, and better locate goods and services. The essence is that the process of searching for the best deal for the merchandise or service, etc., consists not in searching by keywords and going back and forth to compare the parameters in order to compile a shortlist of goods and services and then to look for the best deal, but in 1) conducting the structured search using the pertinent query object(s) and thus locating a shortlist much faster than by the keyword search; and 2) looking for the best deal and researching just a shortlist using either the keywords (now that the exact identification of what we want to buy is known), or just by following the links already provided as the result of the structured search itself.